CHAPTER ONE
INTRODUCTION
1.1 Background of the Study
This study is about school discipline and academic achievement of students. A case study of secondary school students in Uyo Local Government Area. Precisely, it focuses on how much does students’ discipline affects their academic achievement.
Student motivation and engagement play an important role in learning and academic achievement. Closely related to motivation is self-discipline, the ability of students to monitor and control their own behaviour. Students who are highly self-disciplined may be able to better focus on long-term goals and make better choices related to academic engagement. The concept of self-discipline focuses on students’ own ability to engage in or refrain from engaging in a particular behaviour, rather than reliance on external motivations, rewards or punishments.
According to Duckworth and Seligman (2005), the key to establishing good discipline at school lies in learners accepting the teachers’ authority to manage their behaviour and their progress in learning. Learning activities cannot take place effectively in a classroom of thirty learners or more unless one is given authority to control, manage and direct what is going on as, when and how appropriate. Much of the authority as an educator is derived from the status he has in that role and the respect and esteem for educators generally held in society and the one particularly conveyed to learners by their parents and other sources of influence. In order to exercise managerial control, learners’ behaviour needs to be guided by the school rules and regulations. Such school rules may be explicitly stated by the educators or simply inferred from educators’ actions. This means that all schools should draw up a code of conduct and implement it.
Clearly, learners need order in the classroom if the activities which take place are to facilitate effective learning. The most important point to bear in mind in considering discipline is that creating the necessary order is more to do with the skills involved in effective teaching in general than it is to do with how one deals with learner behaviour itself. If the learning activities are well-planned and prepared; if the presentation elicits and maintains learners’ attention, interest and involvement and if the activities are challenging and offer realistic opportunities for success, then the necessary order and discipline will be established.